ESAS2OBIS

Rationale

This repository contains the functionality to standardize the data of the European Seabirds at Sea (ESAS) to a Darwin Core Archive that can be harvested by OBIS and GBIF.

Workflow

To republish the data:

1. Clone this repository to your computer.
2. Download all public ESAS data from ICES.
3. Unzip the download and move the files to the repository in a data/raw directory. The directory (and the files it contains) is ignored by git, so you will have to create it.
4. Open the repository in RStudio by opening the esas2obis.Rproj file.
5. Open the Darwin Core mapping script dwc_mapping.Rmd.
6. Click Run > Run All to transform the data to Darwin Core files using SQL. This will take a while.
7. Verify that all steps in the the mapping script ran without errors.
8. Verify in git or GitHub Desktop that the sample data are not affected (changes would indicate updates or issues in the mapping).
9. Upload the Darwin Core files to the VLIZ "upload" IPT.
10. Validate the Darwin Core Archive (by EurOBIS staff).
11. Publish the dataset to OBIS and GBIF (by EurOBIS staff).

Published dataset

• Dataset on IMIS: source for the metadata and landing page for the DOI (https://doi.org/10.14284/601)
• Dataset on the VLIZ "upload" IPT: source for the data
• Dataset on OBIS
• Dataset on GBIF

Darwin Core transformation

ESAS data is structured in 4 hierarchical tables: campaigns, samples, positions and observations.

Event core

The Event core contains three types of events:

• Campaigns (type=cruise) with an eventID, date range, and remarks.
• Samples (type=sample) with an eventID, parentEventID (the campaign), single date and remarks.
• Positions (type=subSample) with an eventID, parentEventID (the sample), datetime and location.

The eventIDs are created by concatenating the parent identifiers, e.g. <campaignID>_<sampleID>_<positionID> for a position. This makes them unique within the dataset and easy to understand.

Record-level terms such as institutionCode, datasetName, license and rightsHolder are included as well.

See the SQL file for the full transformation.

Occurrence extension

The Occurrence extension contains the observations, with the following terms:

• eventID (the position) and occurrenceID.
• basisOfRecord (always HumanObservation) and occurrenceStatus (always present).
• scientificName, scientificNameID (WoRMS identifier), kingdom (always Animalia) and vernacularName.
• individualCount, sex, lifeStage, behavior, associatedTaxa (also expressed as measurements or facts).
• occurrenceRemarks.

The occurrenceIDs are created similarly to the eventIDs, as <campaignID>_<sampleID>_<positionID>_<observationID>.

See the SQL file for the full transformation.

Extended Measurement Or Fact extension (EMOF)

The EMOF extension contains all other ESAS data, with the following terms:

• eventID: identifier of sample or position (there are no campaign measurements).
• occurrenceID (where applicable): identifier of the occurrence.
• measurementType: lowercase description of the measurement.
• measurementTypeID (where applicable): link to a definition of the measurement. Where possible, we use the BODC Parameter Usage Vocabulary (P01) or fall back to ESAS vocabularies maintained by ICES (e.g. https://vocab.ices.dk/services/rdf/collection/UseOfBinoculars).
• measurementValue: human readable value or description, lowercased where appropriate.
• measurementValueID (where applicable): IRI for the value. These mostly link to values in ESAS vocabularies maintained by ICES (e.g. https://vocab.ices.dk/services/rdf/collection/UseOfBinoculars/2), except for platform code (C17), sex (S10) and life stage (S11).
• measurementUnit (where applicable): unit of the measurement.
• measurementUnitID: link to a definition of the unit, with XXXX for not applicable and UUUU for dimensionless (e.g. individualCount).

The ESAS terms behaviour and association can contain multiple values for a single observation and are split into maximum 3 measurements or facts records.

See Table 1 for an overview and the SQL file for the full transformation.

Table 1: ESAS terms that are expressed as measurement or fact

table	measurement or fact	type	example
sample	platform code	vocab	BELGICA
sample	platform class	vocab	ship
sample	platform side	vocab	left
sample	platform height	number
sample	transect width	integer	300
sample	sampling method	vocab	ship-based transect method with distance estimation and snapshot for flying birds
sample	primary sampling	boolean	True
sample	target taxa	vocab	all species recorded (standard)
sample	distance bins	string	0|50|100|200|300
sample	use of binoculars	vocab	Binoculars used extensively for scanning ahead and to the side, naked eye used for close observations (e.g. for cetacean monitoring)
sample	number of observers	integer	2
position	distance	number	0.7
position	area	number	0.21
position	wind force	vocab	moderate breeze
position	visibility	vocab	C
position	glare	vocab	weak
position	sun angle	integer
position	cloud cover	vocab
position	precipitation	vocab	none
position	ice cover	integer	0
position	observation conditions	vocab
observation	group identifier	string	12
observation	in transect	boolean	True
observation	individual count	integer	1
observation	observation distance	vocab	100-200
observation	life stage	vocab	adult
observation	moult	vocab	active primary moult
observation	plumage	vocab	non-breeding (winter) plumage
observation	sex	vocab	female
observation	travel direction	vocab	45
observation	prey	vocab	medium fish, unidentified (ca. 2-5x bill length)
observation	association x 3	vocab	associated with observation base
observation	behaviour x 3	vocab	scavenging

Repo structure

The repository structure is based on Cookiecutter Data Science and the Checklist recipe. Files and directories indicated with GENERATED should not be edited manually.

├── README.md              : Description of this repository
├── LICENSE                : Repository license
├── esas2obis.Rproj        : RStudio project file
├── .gitignore             : Files and directories to be ignored by git
│
├── src
│   └── dwc_mapping.Rmd    : Darwin Core mapping script
|
├── sql                    : Darwin Core transformations
│   ├── dwc_event.sql
│   ├── dwc_occurrence.sql
│   └── dwc_mof.sql
|
└── data
    ├── processed          : Darwin Core output of mapping script GENERATED
    └── processed_sample   : Darwin Core sample output of mapping script for git comparison GENERATED

License

MIT License for the code and documentation in this repository. The included data is released under another license.